He Gets 'Up In The Air' Like Clooney

By Phil VillarrealDecember 17, 2009

Automobile sales consultant Tom Stuker is the real-life equivalent of George Clooney in the Oscar-contending film Up in the Air, well, except for the whole having hot, dirty airport hotel sex with Vera Farmiga thing.

Stuker, profiled by Scott Mayerowitz of ABC News, is a member of United Airline’s super-elite clubs that give him no waiting at security or check-in and a special team dedicated to finding his luggage. They’ll even shuttle him to connecting flights in golf carts, and if necessary, bump another traveler off a flight so he can get a seat.

Mayerowitz writes:

United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski Janikowski describes the airline’s high-mileage program, Global Services, as the airline industry’s answer to Yale University’s secretive Skull and Bones club, which counts presidents, senators and CEOs as among its past members.

“You don’t know what you get until you are in it, and then you don’t want to leave,” Urbanski Janikowski said. “It’s a world that not many folks know even exists.”

Fliers like Stuker arrive at special check-in areas where agents greet them by name and whisk away their bags. Their boarding passes are already printed, and at some airports an agent simply opens a hidden door, leading them to the very front of the security checkpoint line.